


Over the garden wall

by emotionalsupporthufflepuff



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Non-Magical, Cats, F/M, Fluff, Happy Ending, Mild Cliffhanger, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-24
Updated: 2020-07-25
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:08:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25477441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emotionalsupporthufflepuff/pseuds/emotionalsupporthufflepuff
Summary: Draco's new neighbor is odd....but cute... and her cat is a flat-faced menace.
Relationships: Luna Lovegood/Draco Malfoy
Comments: 12
Kudos: 75





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Talonwillow (TalonWillow)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TalonWillow/gifts).



> Talon put the damn idea in my head. This story is complete I will post part 2 by next week :)

Draco drums his fingers on the glass surface of the table, other hand flicking ash from a cigarette, watching his neighbor in her back garden from his peripheral vision.

Trying not to openly stare, as that would be rude and unbecoming. 

But she’s doing yoga.

And she’s really really good at it. 

Currently, she’s folded almost in half with her head between her knees, her long blonde ponytail flipped over and touching the ground. Her yoga pants are a space print, and her sports bra is plain baby blue, only making her pale skin look lighter. A few freckles mark her- 

_ Fuck _ .

He was staring so hard he jumped when his cat brushed against his knee. 

“Little shit.” He chides the cat, who lifts his head and meows back. “Yes, you are Artemis.” 

Draco never thought he was a cat person. Truthfully he was hanging around the shelter to flirt with a girl who worked there. But when Hermione revealed she wasn’t into blokes, adopting a cat seemed like the best way to take a step back. Artemis was just a kitten, and the shelter told him she was probably deaf. 

She wasn’t, she was just really good at ignoring people. 

That’s when he knew even if he wasn’t a cat person, he was  _ this cat’s person.  _

When he looks again, the neighbor girl has straightened herself back up and is rolling up her mat. She goes back into her flat without a backward glance.

Finishing off the cigarette, he motions for the cat to follow him, who promptly ignores him until he shuts the door all the way, then paws at the glass until he opens it again. 

He vows to at least learn the neighbor girl’s name.

***

Her name is Luna. 

She giggles for a while when she learns his name and makes star jokes for the rest of the conversation. He’s heard them all before but from her...it’s actually kind of cute. 

Luna is….strange…

And not in the typical “I’m not like other girls I like beer and food and don’t care what anyone thinks “type of quirky, but really… 

She works at the zoo, on rotation between different areas. She says she likes the Avian house the best because she was a bird in her last life. Draco laughs nervously, but she studied him very seriously in response. In a minute, she proclaims that he was a snake, something like a tree viper, something fast and dangerous. 

He rubs the back of his neck and makes some excuse to go back inside. 

***

Luna has a boyfriend named Neville. He’s a florist and looks like a nice guy, the type of bloke who you can bring to your grandmothers to tea without a second thought. He probably likes gentle sex and calls it “making love.” The “drinks and football at the pub with the lads “sort who showers as soon as he gets home, so she doesn’t have to smell the pub off him. 

Draco...is, not that. He’s a family law solicitor who drinks on weekdays with other solicitors. He got into the field to get kids out of the grasp of shitty parents but finds its mostly petty divorces and coming up with asinine custody schedules that ruin any kid’s chance at having a normal life, as they bounce from one crappy parent to the other. 

He likes rough sex, the kind that leaves indents in the wall from the headboard smacking against it...the kind that leaves both parties sore for days. 

And he doesn’t do football but watches Rugby when he can, for the fights. 

To jaded for healthy relationships, he has Pansy, an on again off again friend with benefits, who left law to go to fashion school. Pansy, who is currently sipping a grande caramel frappuccino and watching surreptitiously over his shoulder as he nurses another cigarette. 

“She is cute...not normally your type- “Pansy mumbles around her straw. “You normally go for the dark-haired fighty ones-” 

He presses a finger to his lips, begging her to shut up. 

Artemis starts to let out a low growl, arch her spine, and backs away from a shrub. With a great tremble, another cat emerges from it. 

“Cat” is a term used loosely for the creature. It’s more of a small, dust-colored flat-faced monster with an over massive tooth jutting up from its jaw. One eye is looking at Artemis and the other on the opposite side of the garden. 

“What is that?” Pansy asks, lifting her drink like she’s getting poised to run with it in hand. 

Luna’s blonde head pops up over the garden wall. “Draco? Oh good, listen, have you seen my pussy?” 

Pansy snorts so hard Draco would bet there’s caramel frappuccino embedded in her sinuses from that day forward. 

“Come again?” Draco asks, not looking at his friend whose mumbling  _ that’s what she said  _ under her breath. 

“My pussycat? He’s grey and fluffy.” She cranes her neck higher over the garden wall. “Oh, there he is, making friends I see. Can you grab him for me, please?” 

He almost says no. He almost offers to purchase any animal her heart desires as long as he doesn’t have to handle this thing. 

The stupid, impulsive part of his brain that’s secretly driven by his dick sends him forward, making a wide circle to the back of the creature. He steps on a twig, and the cat bolts towards Luna’s, clearing the wall with ease.

“Alastor, you naughty boy.” She scoops up the furball who starts to look relatively calmer in her arms, though it’s difficult to tell. “Is that white one yours Draco? She’s gorgeous for a shorthair breed.” 

He can’t tell if that’s a compliment or a slight but says, “Thank you.” anyway. Taking his cat under his arm, he walks them both closer to the wall so Luna can get a better look. Artemis emits a long vibrating noise without opening her mouth but goes along with it. 

“She looks like you,” Luna says, serenely scratching the cat behind the ears. Alastor jumps down in a fit of jealousy, but Artemis goes from growling to purring in a heartbeat. 

Luna meets his eye, her hand still petting the cat. He feels like he’s x rayed and evaluated for all his sins and wrongdoings and wants to bolt but stay right where he is - 

“Extraordinary.” She mumbles and walks back into her flat, Alastor trailing behind her. 

“Draco fancies the weird girl.” Pansy hums in a sing-song voice. 

***

As the months get warmer, Draco starts spending more time in his previously neglected garden. It has everything to do with a temperate summer and making sure Artemis gets enough fresh air, and nothing to do with Luna’s post-work yoga sessions, or the fact that she’s switched from form-fitting pants to small shorts, or sometimes just a bathing suit. 

He even has his birthday party outside, inviting Luna who responds with “I should have known you are a Gemini. Of course, I’ll come.” 

Luna baffles and amazes his friends who are all determined to see how far she’ll take the act. They push at her until they come to the conclusion that’s really how she is. 

She doesn’t drink what’s provided and instead brings homemade kombucha that’s flavored with apples and cinnamon. 

She doesn’t bring Neville. 

***

They usually catch up every day, chatting at there garden wall but never venturing into the other’s flat. Sometimes she brings him crystals or herbs she thinks he needs “to cleanse his aura.” 

She’s so utterly different from anyone he’s ever met—half mad but brilliant and genuine. But after a lifetime of fake people and job that makes him want to drive his fist through the wall sometimes…

But she has a boyfriend.

And really they’re probably too different to work beyond the capacity they’re at now. 

***

One evening, towards the end of June, she knocks on his front door. He invites her in, but she just shakes her head. 

Somethings different. Her shoulders are hunched in and her blue-grey eyes won’t meet his steel-colored ones. She’s even dressed tamely compared to her usual standard, in a black sundress with sunflower patterned leggings.

“I just need to ask you if you don’t mind checking in on Alastor while I’m away. I was going to ask Neville, but we broke up, so I don’t think he would want to do it.” 

“I don’t mind. And I’m sorry to hear Luna.” he means it….mostly. 

“It’s alright.” she shrugs. “It was mutual, we just weren’t compatible anymore. I think my tastes are changing.”

***

Luna is in the American Southwest for July. Says something about an annual UFO Festival in Roswell, New Mexico. 

Her flat is just as multifaceted as she is. Every space is decorated with art, plants, crystals or a bookshelf. It is chaotic in nature but clean and well attended too. Light tapestries hang over each window, illuminating certain spaces in color. 

Alastor is not happy with the arrangement. He bites Draco on the ankle every day for the first week. The following week he won’t come out from under her bed. 

Finally, on the third week, he comes out and lets Draco pet him gingerly on the head before he dashes just out of arms reach.

He’ll take it. 

The problem starts when July fades into August and Luna doesn’t come back...


	2. Chapter 2

It's a scorching hot mid August day when Luna comes home. She wanders through her front door, suitcase in hand looking as though she had never seen the place before. Sunglasses with pink lenses are perched on top of her head, and a few more freckles dot her face but the biggest change is that she looks more serene than when she left. 

Draco however is not serene. He's been ravage by fear and anxiety all for this dotty woman who he hardly knows. He's smoking a joint in a corner, a wash in dark blue light from a tapestry in front of a window with Alastor at his feet. 

He stubs it out in a nearby ashtray and stands. 

"Thank you for taking care of the place while I was gone. I got an unexpected opportunity to look for Big Foot in the Florida Everglades and then from there took a trip out to the Bermuda triangle." 

Draco runs his forehead, stamping his temper down. "You could have told me that you know… so I would have known how much longer you'd be. " 

She presses her lips together nodding softly. "Yes. I see that now. You were probably concerned- " 

"It's fine Luna." He presses her house key in her hand. She closes her hand around his and stands on her toes to press a kiss to his mouth. Her lips taste like the apple and cinnamon kombucha she's always drinking. He hates the stuff and yet it seems like the perfect flavor on her. 

But she will destroy him from the inside of he let's her in any further. 

*** 

He doesn't go out to the garden anymore. When Artemis howls to go outside, he opens the door to let her go out alone. 

Luna still does yoga after work and leaves things on the wall with a note for him every once in awhile. He retrieves them only when he's heard the door close. One of the built in bookshelves is slowly becoming a colorful monument to her, in the otherwise sleek and sparse flat. 

*** 

It's late one evening in October when the weather has taken a sudden dip temperature. 

It's nearly 9pm and Artemis hasn't come scratching on the door yet, so Draco goes out to the garden for the first time in months. He can hear the tinkling of her collar somewhere but can't see her thin white body anywhere. 

"Come on Art...it's fucking freezing…" the sound of her collar comes from above him. 

Artemis has made herself comfortable in a tall tree, in which the trunk of which starts in Luna's garden. Draco calls for her to come down but she ignores him with expert precision. 

_ Fuck.  _

"I swear to fucking God...never again… Fine. Freeze. See if I care. " but he doesn't move because despite 27 years of practice he isn't actually a heartless asshole. 

The wall is just up to his chest, so he drags a chair over and climbs over it. It's only when he's over he realizes he's only a pair of joggers and that getting over with the cat is going to be considerably harder. 

The sounds of a back door unlocking and flood of light let's him know he's been caught. 

"Draco? What's going on?" Luna is standing there is just an oversized tee shirt, grey with a unicorn running across the front. He can see every inch of her porcelain thighs. 

He points to the cat because he doesn't trust himself to speak. There's a very familiar part of his brain reminding him how long it's been since he's been with someone. 

Artemis springs to life, leaping down from the tree and into Luna's flat. 

"You can come in and try to get if you'd like…" Blue grey eyes are tracing his body and pink flush tinges her cheeks. 

She wants him just as much. It would be a terrible idea to go in the flat right now, there's no way he'd leave before morning and no way he'd ever untangle himself from her again. 

But like Alice following the white rabbit...he has to know…he follows her inside. 

*** 

"I'm sorry about the bed, Lu. I'll buy you a new one just pick one out." 

Her nails trace abstract patterns on his arms as they slide around her hips. 

"Oh I'm not sorry. That one was getting too small anyway." 

*** 

Their new cottage looks like both of them. 

Modern furniture with clean lines in shades of white , grey and black are dotted with colorful stones, cloths and knickknacks

The house is bright and airy. Draco has an office to retreat to with heavily draped windows and bookcases to cover an entire wall. Luna only goes in there to leave things on his desk. 

Luna has the sunroom. It's her space that's a chaotic mass of half finished projects, fully finished art pieces, books and cat beds. 

The garden is filled with older trees that make a lot of shade, painting the grass in shadow with spots of sunlight. 

Luna does yoga out there every evening after work and Draco sits at the porch table pretending not to watch.


End file.
